094 2016 looking forward

The new year is finally here, well to be honest it's come around so quickly I can hardly believe it!

This is the year of no excuses; I have all the tools, all the paint and oh my goodness, all the models I need to get back full scale.

The action list for the first six months is pretty simple for me

1. Complete the 30th Cambridgeshire Regiment (perry miniatures)
2. Start (at the least) my war of the roses mercenaries. Possibly as Burgundians. (Perry miniatures)
3. Practise and practise with basic airbrush techniques. (I want to get beyond just using it for undercoat!)
4. Avoid the temptation of starting AWI models!
5. Put together a plan at least for some Truscale Marines (this is one I have thought about for a loooong time)

I am keeping it simple for the first 6 months to see how life settles down, I have found it pretty hectic the last few months and hobby time has been limited (but thankfully not non existent!)


What are your plans for 2016?

093 Return to the Hobby room!

So those of you paying attention may have noticed that I moved house on the run up to Christmas and my hobby mojo got somewhat crampt by everything being in boxes!

Well thankfully I have gone from this..

To finally being all set like this.... :-)

You might have noticed that I acquired some new paint stands which are great and helping a lot already to clear some of the paint off my desk top.

This were classic flat packs which needed very little putting together and one is "free and easy" while the other is all glued together (glued works better!)

Now that I am settled and sorted I am hoping to get back to all the fun of painting again as 2016 starts.

092 Seasons Greetings!!

Perhaps a little late but anyway, best wishes to all of you this Christmas!

2015 has been an interesting year for me with a reborn joy in painting and modelling, relocating to a new house and getting going with new hobbies and health drives!

This year has also seen some big changes in the gaming world with the death of the Old World and the birth of the Age of Sigmar.

GW have raised the bar to the rest of the modelling industry with some amazing new models both in terms of the build quality and detail but also in the SCALE! Some of them have been just huge and in plastic too!

2016 is sizing up to be a great modelling year with progress on a lot of fronts seeming possible.

So here is to 2015 and all the best for 2016! Cheers!

091 I ATEN'T DEAD

In the wise words for Granny Weatherwax, "I aten't dead!"

Sorting moving house and getting everything in order has taken quite a bit more time and energy than I imagined.

I'll be posting some short updates soon with some more to follow I guess now in the new year!

090 Tease!

089 Under Pressure!

Look what's arrived! All the way from deepest darkest China; my airbrush compressor is finally here. Actually it didn't take as long as I thought it would which is great.

Now in typical UK fashion it cost more to get it here than anywhere else in the world but I am just about OK with the £100 price tag given it is a twin compressor with a half decent storage tank to go with it.

Having got it going on a test run its also not as noisy as I was worried it might be even with both going full speed. Also once it gets the tank full it switches off anyway making it silent for a decent period.

All in all so far I am pretty pleased with it. Waiting on my airbrush itself to arrive to give it a proper blast!

088 And life gets in the way....

It looks like the run up to Christmas might be a little slow hobby wise as after five years in the same property our landlord has decided to sell up and move us out.

They have given us a little more time then they need to but it still means we will be manically trying to find somewhere and get years of accumulated junk packed up and shifted on the run up to Christmas. Far from the best time of year to be moving house! I should know as that's what we ended up doing last time!!

I will hopefully still get a bit of time to unwind and I will also try and update on new kit arrivals but it might be very hit and miss.

Wish me luck!

087 Rambling Up Date

For the last few weeks I have been doing Sunday morning walks come rambles in various spots around East Anglia in a vague attempt to one, improve my overall fitness (I am a closet couch potato) and two, get out and see some of the amazing natural beauty that we have in the UK.

The first couple of walks were a little sneaky as they either started or finished at a pub for lunch but otherwise I have been pretty good!

 Swans on a standing dyke leading onto the River Cam

 The start point on a misty Sunday morning walk along the Ouse

 Cattle along side the Great Ouse near Willingham

 Fenland farming along the ouse

Tree planting along the edge of the fens

I am going to try and show these walks in a more structured way than this but I have been a little rushed to get started on these so today is just a wrap up of the first fee walks; two along the River Cam and one along the Great Ouse and the Fens.

All of them have been great so far although one did involve a two mile detour... Yes I got us lost!! Ok I admit it! :-)

More to come soon

086 On Parade

A few more bits and pieces of work on the 30th Cambridgeshire got done finally!

The banner bearers are pretty much ready. I have blu taced them as a mock up to see the positioning for the GMB flags.

085 Brushing up

New toys are incoming! I finally fell to the lure of the airbrush and the first bits of kit have arrived.

I have anticipated cocking it up a few times so I invested in cleaning gear first!

I have gone for a Iwata airbrush, a bit of a balance between price and quality after quite some lengthy reviewing and searching.

I have ordered a "go brand" air compressor but still one that has very good reviews, with air tank and twin pistons.

Fingers crossed that I do better than the last time I tried an airbrush; at school some twenty years ago!

084 Lost in the Woods

So those of you that check in here my have noticed I have been missing for a few moments!

I have been holidaying again!

This time I have been enjoying the peace, quiet and tranquillity of a log cabin in the woods in Keldy near York.

Our Cabin.

This place was amazing. So peaceful and relaxing; not much in the way of activities but that was not what we were after. Just peace and quiet in good company to relax.

Our view and the cheeky little hot tub :-)

There are lots of cabins in Keldy but the spacing and the tree cover is so good you dont really feel that there is anyone else there.

Walks in the woods were wonderful. A couple of the days we went on guided walks and then we wandered on our own.

The guides were great, showing us all manner of different palnts and animals. What was edible and what wasn't. We also learned some bushcrafts of shelter building and fire starting!

Totally relaxing and no phone signal! The local village is about a 15min drive away and is a beautiful little village with a steam railway that runs trains everyday out across the north yorkshire moors to places like Whitby and the surrounds

Forest Holidays, you never know you might like it!

083 Family Photo

082 Officer and a.....Colour Sergeant?

Started to get some colour going on the officer group, just the basic whites and yellows to start with.

The Colour Sergeant with his base coat of white on.

Another officer/banner bearer in the same position ready to be properly whited in and his yellows added.

081 Wash Spiders?

Dredging through my old but gold boxes of mini's from the by gone era of fifteen years ago I found some Warp Spider Aspect Warriors with what I must have thought at the time was a bitching paint job.... Sadly in the cold hard light of fifteen years of life later it looks.... well rubbish.

Very obviously in the "Red" era of painting and when flat bland and slightly shaky edged painting was still in vogue (ok that was never the case but hey! )

Fairy Power Spray to the rescue, lets see how a few days in the clover tub wash pot does for them.

Not sure if I will look to sell them on Ebay or repaint them for myself. Not really feeling them as good models if I am honest; I don't think the style has aged well.

080 30th Cambridgeshire - Moving forward

Got the bread bags done on the latest group and then started preparing the straps and braces with re- blacking before starting on the white.

You can see the whole group here ready with the exception of the three officers. All the re blacking is completed and I am just getting ready to go blind doing all the white strapping and lace.

079 Stormcast Fluff - 40k Cross overs?

I was reading a short piece of fluff in Issue 83 of WhiteDwarf about the new Celestant-Prime and was struck (which was possibly the intention) by how similar the idea was to that of the creation of the Primarchs and the original Spacemarine Legions in 40k (30k but you know what I mean!).

A few suitable twists, the Celestant was not lost like the Primarchs but Ghal Maraz which was need to wake the celestant was....

Having made the Celestant, Sigmar then created the Legions, I mean the Stormhosts.

Its very much, Celestant made in the image of sigmar, stormhosts made in the image of the celestant in the same way the Primarchs are made in the image of the emperor and the marines are made in the image of their Primarch. Now right now there is only one Celestant and there were many Primarchs but who knows what may come in the future?

The other thing I found interesting is the Stormcasts are literally created, destroyed and brought back to life. When I first saw the models I had the image in my head that there was nothing behind those masks, that they were either empty husks (thousand sons anyone?) or machines.

078 Beat the Drum

Got some time on the 30th's Drummer Boy over the weekend.

The pics don't really do it justice. I am still to sort out a proper set up for photos; always something to do isn't there!

Tilted left?

Or tilted right?

I am liking the right tilt but in think its meant to be the other way to line up with the strapping over his chest.

077 A Pop Fuss!

Found a little bit of time this week to work on something a little different and I finally put some colour to Prince Apophas.

I started off with a black base coat and then built up some ancient ancient Dark Angels green, and some washes of the new green wash whose name escapes me completely...

You can even see I used the pop as my model holder this time round :-)

I went for green colouring to the scarabs just because it seemed a suitable colour for the bugs.... right up until my wife asked me what they were and when I said scarabs she said "well why didn't you paint them blue??" hmmmmm a quick google shows yes, most of the world and the 'Eavy Metal team chose a blue colour..... Oh well

I have started with a bronze colouring on the details of the head and shoulder. Not sure yet if I am going to pick out more colour or stay with a all bronzy/gold with some degree of corrosion.

076 Disappointment - Codex and Army Books

This is a short post which I think I will come back to a few more times in the future about the quality of the "newer" codexes(i?) and army books.

Now I don't mean quality in terms of the rules or how they play but about the quality of the book itself.

I have been gone many moons and while some of it is rose tinted nostalgia for days gone by I do still think that the quality of the books is poor compared to how they used to be.

The Art

There is some great stuff in some of these books and by no means am I suggesting its all bad or that I am any kind of artist but I think overall the art is regurgitated and bland theses days. I don't look at any of it (or very little) and feel myself magically drawn into the place and time. I don't find my mind wandering off thinking about the setting and growing it.

The Writing

I love reading, I devour books.

The current novels being written are good (some are awful) and I wont knock them but in the codexes? No, no no. Get your writers working harder guys.

Dull. Limited. Repetitive.

The Fluff

This is a catch all of everything else missed above and while some of it is still great I do feel that more and more is really just page fillers and doesnt deserve to be in on its merits...

What do people think? I am I just a old grump who has got cynical and picking in old age?

075 The Boy done good

Those boys at Perry have done it again and shipped my more plastic joy in a box!

And they don't just give you a ridiculous amount of miniatures for your money, oh no! They also give you history!

Notes about armour, weapons, shields and helms!

About archers and their clothes and equipment!

And even more than that they give you banners and details of who fought and died where during the period of the box set!

Cant wait to get a few of these out and going, also liking the look of the upcoming french army which will be definitely joining me when its available!

074 A few tweaks

The necromancer got a couple of details finished off today, not a massive update but a little WIP.

073 Bulking up the 30th

So I found a little time to slap some red across the next few of the 30th Cambridgeshire Regiment.

You can see them here all ready and waiting to get their bread bags and straps whited up.

I have also put in an order for some more wonderful perry mini's and am waiting now for some war of the roses items to arrive :-)

072 Necro Post

Some progress was also made back on the necromancer, this is quite a cool little mini with some great potential for conversion work so I may have to invest in another one or two.

I am experimenting a little with skin tones, at the moment he is a little (ok a lot) too dark but if you dont try you dont know!

sepia wash over everything was another little experiment; conclusion? Looks good on the reds and browns... looks absolute crap on the black, just made it a streaky mess....

I need to figure out a good way to do grain texture on the staff/crook. I have seen some good paint jobs on it but dont have a clue how they have done it. Just a very steady hand and small brush??